In the manufacturing process of a liquid crystal panel, it is required to fill liquid crystal between an array substrate and a color filter substrate through a liquid crystal filling device.
Existing liquid crystal filling devices include a substrate stage and a support used for supporting a liquid crystal container. When filling liquid crystal, a substrate to be filled is mounted on the substrate stage, and the liquid crystal in the liquid crystal container is dropped onto the substrate. The filling process is performed under room temperature. When the color filter substrate and the array substrate are bonded so as to be assembled together, the edges of the opposite surfaces of the two substrates are coated with sealant, which is used to seal the liquid crystal in vacuum. The sealant is glue with viscidity at normal temperature. Therefore, the sealant needs to be cured through an UV pre-curing process and a high-temperature curing process after the liquid crystal has been sealed.
The vacuum sealed liquid crystal diffuses quickly along a rubbing direction of an alignment film on the surface of the substrate. Accordingly, ionic contamination of liquid crystal may occur due to that the quick diffused liquid crystal is contacted with the sealant not being cured, which causes edge mura and image sticking occurring on the liquid crystal panel. Furthermore, the display quality of the liquid crystal panel is affected.
To solve the problem, in the prior art, a solution of adding photo spacers or trenching on positions corresponding to black matrix at edges of a color filter substrate is proposed. However, a height difference will be generated in the color filter substrate at the position of photo spacer or trenching, so that an alignment film may be damaged and a rubbing mark may be generated when the rubbing alignment of the alignment film is performed. Also, adding photo spacers or trenching will add complexity to process. Furthermore, if the liquid crystal is dropped onto an array substrate, it is useless to add photo spacers or trenching on the color filter substrate to prevent the liquid crystal from diffusing.